


Sleepover

by perceptual_pedestal



Series: Academy Days [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Academy Era, Characters Watching Disney Movies, Fluff without Plot, Friendship, Gen, first sleepover, possible concussion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-10 22:52:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4410959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perceptual_pedestal/pseuds/perceptual_pedestal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons spent the night in each other's dorm rooms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleepover

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing except any possible mistakes. Bonus points if you can spot the Supernatural quote.

Leopold Fitz sleeps like the teenager he hates admitting he still is– all sprawling limbs and tangled sheets, mouth hanging open, arms splayed at awkward angles, face half-buried in the pillow. Even in sleep he is restless – constantly shifting, unable to settle on a comfortable position. Papers and books are spread wildly across her normally-neat bed, scattered around his sleeping form like debris after a storm. 

His face is devoid of expression – calm, serene, and impossibly young. There’s a sleep crease on one of his cheeks and his usually-neat curls fall messily across his forehead. He’s so deeply unconscious that nothing about her entrance disturbs him at all. 

It takes longer than it should for her to realize that she’s staring, standing in the doorway of her dorm room, balancing a box of pizza in one hand and her coat and keys in the other. It occurs to her as she closes the door behind her and sets the food and drinks atop her desk that she has never seen him asleep before. Inevitably, she’s the one to fall asleep during late night study sessions or midnight movie marathons. There’s something unsettling about seeing him unconscious and the paranoid part of her watches his chest rise and fall a few times before consciously dismissing the feeling. 

“Fiiiiiiiiiiiitz” she singsongs, setting aside the pizza and sparing only a passing thought to the stack of plates in her cupboard. They can eat from the box like real college kids. 

“Fitz!” she tries again, abandoning the food and moving to shake his shoulder. “I have food!” 

No response. 

Caught halfway between annoyance and affection, she leans over the bed, lips quirking up into a mischievous smile as she places them mere inches from his ear. 

“LEOPOLD FITZ!!!” She shouts his given name at a decibel designed to shatter eardrums. 

He wakes immediately, like a hibernating animal suddenly startled into a fight or flight response, blue eyes flying open, lungs gasping for breath, expression a hilarious combination of fear, shock, and utter confusion. She has just long enough to choke out a single giggle before he attempts to bolt from the bed, knocking her off balance and slamming his forehead into her nose. 

Apparently his instinctual response is flight. 

They wind up on the floor in a pile of tangled limbs and colorful curses.

“Bloody hell Jemma!” he gasps, rubbing at his forehead as he attempts to detangle himself from both the bed sheets and her limbs.

“Literally,” Jemma winces, swiping a hand under her nose which has begun dripping blood like a faucet, and gingerly sitting up.

“It’s just blood Fitz,” she admonishes when she realizes that he’s gaping at her in horror and all the color has drained from his face. “I’ll be fine. You on the other hand probably have a concussion.”

Twenty minutes later, she’s reasonably sure he’s not concussed. Her nose has stopped bleeding, and he’s holding an ice pack to his head with one hand and shoveling pizza into his mouth with the other. She’s cleared the papers and books off the bed, and he’s inserted a truly abysmal horror movie into the DVD player.

“She’d never survive that” Jemma points out a few minutes later, watching a scantily-clad teenage girl stagger around after having one leg amputated by a chainsaw. “He severed the femoral artery. She’d bleed out in minutes.”

“Why is it that no one in horror movies ever has even rudimentary medical knowledge?” Fitz asks with a serious expression, sincerely pondering the question.

Jemma shrugs, stealing a piece of pepperoni off his pizza slice and grinning when he glares at her.  
An hour and a half’s worth of inaccurate gore later, the movie credits are rolling. Fitz is half asleep, but rises zombie-like from the bed, intent on returning to his own room and sleeping for twelve hours straight.

“What are you doing?” Simmons asks sharply

He whips his head around to stare at her, grimacing when the rooms spins slightly in response. 

“Going back to my room.”

“Fitz, if you think that I’m going to let you sleep alone after sustaining a possible concussion, then you hit your head harder than I thought.”

“So, you’re just going to sleep with me then?” The words are out of his mouth before he has time to process what he’s saying, and he flushes bright red when Simmons merely raises an eyebrow. 

“I just meant that…”

“Not in the euphemistic sense….”

“Sorry, I’m just really...”

“I just meant that you should have someone…”

Simmons cuts them both off with an exasperated laugh, and he can’t help but grin back at her, ever-amazed at her ability to alleviate his embarrassment. 

“You’re sleeping here tonight.” She says finally, in a tone that demands no argument, “Doctor’s orders.”

“You have a PhD, not an MD,” he mutters back grumpily, “I’ll take the couch.” 

“Actually, I have two PhDs and my bed is plenty big enough for the two of us.” She admonishes primly. “Besides, everyone already thinks that we’re sleeping together. Now they’ll be right, at least in the literal sense.”

She flashes him a grin, reassuring him that she’s kidding as she clicks off both the light and the television with the universal remote he installed for her last week. 

“Goodnight Fitz,” she sighs as she snuggles under the blankets, “I’ll wake you up in a few hours to check on you.”

Fitz rolls his eyes as he climbs in beside her, careful not to jostle her small form. “Best of luck with that,” he says sarcastically, failing to stifle a yawn, “Screw consciousness, that’s what I say.”

He’s fairly certain that he hears her snort out a laugh before he descends once again into the blissful ignorance of sleep.  
____________________________________________________________________________________  
Jemma Simmons sleeps like a child- all curled limbs and dewy skin, lips slightly parted, one hand curled beneath her cheek, her expression the embodiment of innocence. Even in sleep she is poised – still and silent, every breath even and deliberate. 

It takes longer than it should for him to realize that he’s staring. He’s sitting with his back against the headboard, legs spread out in front of him, attempting to fill in some details of a vague idea for a new remote detonation system. It’s been a full minute since he’s even glanced at the notebook lying open in his lap, but he can’t seem to drag his gaze away from her sleeping form, too distracted by how young she looks. 

He’s seen Jemma Simmons destroy incompetent presenters with a single question, mix beakers full of skin-eating acids without batting an eye, and drink rapid-fire shots of straight tequila without wincing. He’s well aware that she is technically a doctor twice over and that she understands even the most complex of ideas given only rudimentary information. She’s the most brilliant person he has ever met, and yet in sleep she looks like the eighteen year old kid that she’s never really had the chance to be.

The clock on his nightstand reads 2:13 am and the movie credits are rolling on the television screen. He doesn’t want to wake her, hates the thought of disturbing her when she looks so innocent and peaceful, but she’ll kill him if he doesn’t at least try.

“Simmons?” he whispers, and his voice is barely audible to his own ears. 

He keeps his eyes trained on her face, thinking vaguely about absolute thresholds and whether they vary based on level of consciousness, and then reprimands himself. If he’s trying to turn waking his best friend into an experiment, Simmons has been an even worse influence than he imagined. 

“Siiiimmmmoooonss?”He sing-songs, slightly louder this time. 

Her eyes blink open immediately. Sparing a thought to the movie credits still scrolling across the screen, he decides that she wakes like a Disney princess – all wide eyes and long lashes, instantly and completely conscious without any groaning, confusion, or muffled curses. 

She sits up slowly, rubbing her eyes and stifling a yawn. She glances over at him, awake and alert within a matter of seconds. “How long have I been asleep?”

“Since about the time the mermaid tried to comb her hair with a fork.”

“Dinglehopper,” she corrects absently, and he can’t help but grin. Count on Jemma Simmons to be well-informed on everything from complex chemical compounds to Disney trivia. 

“You could have kicked me out,” she says as she glances at the clock and notes the time, attempting to finger comb the knots and tangles from her now-disheveled curls, eventually giving up and twisting it into a bun. 

“You were exhausted,” he offers, and it’s true. 

She’d been up since the crack of dawn, sequestered in the lab with a hurriedly scribbled formula and a vague idea. She hadn’t eaten, hadn’t paused, hadn’t thought about anything other than complex reactions, final projects, and advanced chemical composition in over twelve hours. So, when he tracked her down at 11 pm and found her half-asleep at the lab table, he’d insisted on grabbing food and relaxing with a movie. Somehow that had turned into her sitting cross-legged on his bed, wearing sweatpants and one of his old Doctor Who t-shirts, eating Chinese food, and watching the little mermaid until she’d passed out halfway through the movie. 

She hums her agreement, nudging his leg out of the way before collapsing back onto the pillow. 

“I don’t want to go back to my dorm,” she admits in a voice that sounds perilously close to a whine, a tone she would cringe at if she wasn’t too exhausted to care. 

“You can crash here,” he offers, “I won’t even wake you up to check for signs of a concussion.”

Simmons sticks her tongue out sleepily, too exhausted to devise a witty comeback.

“I don’t have class until eight,” She considers, closing her eyes and snuggling more firmly under the blankets, apparently having made up her mind to stay. 

Fitz narrows his eyes at her as he comprehends the implication behind her words. “Don’t you dare wake me up that early.” 

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she says sweetly without opening her eyes, a sly smile spreading across her lips. 

Fitz glares at her for a moment more, just to emphasize his point, and she opens her eyes to grin up at him. 

“Fine!” she relents with an eye roll, “I’ll let you sleep.”

He’s not entirely sure that he believes her, but when she scoots over, holds back the blankets, and pats the bed next to her, he isn’t about to argue. He sets the notebook aside, clicks the power button on the remote, and settles down on his side of the bed, keeping a deliberate distance between them. 

Simmons ruins that plan almost immediately by scooting closer and tucking herself against his side. He stiffens for a moment, but relaxes quickly when she cracks open one eye to glare at him.

“I don’t bite Fitz,” she admonishes and he smiles as she tucks her head against his shoulder, her hair tickling his cheek. 

“Whatever,” he argues, closing his own eyes and adjusting to the strange yet familiar sensation of having her so close, “just don’t hog all the blankets.”


End file.
